


Map

by avatarkadaj



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Other, Spoilers, TLJ Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 09:49:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13028481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avatarkadaj/pseuds/avatarkadaj
Summary: People who run want to be found. Don't lie to yourself, you didn't want to die. Luke Skywalker Character Study (?)/Introspection





	Map

**Author's Note:**

> The following introspective fic DOES INCLUDE SPOILERS FOR "THE LAST JEDI". Do read at your own risk. Nothing major or major plot points are spoiled but there is information here that was not in trailers. Enjoy. :)

You said you left to die. But you didn’t. A man who wants to die will do it. You crashed your ship but you survived despite the wreckage. That’s not a man who wants to die; you’re an excellent pilot, like your father before you. If you wanted to crash, you would have, but of the methods to choose, that wouldn’t be yours.

  
You have a light saber. It would have been quick and almost painless to flick it on while it hovered over your chest. Heaven’s light shining in the night, like a star seeking recompense for your crimes. Only the quick sound of the activation switch, maybe your breath as it is driven out of your body and then silence. It could have been easy. But you didn’t.

You fled to an island of jagged peaks and rocky shores. A violent tide beneath you, a coarse wind above. The skies are often stormy, high points eager for lightning. You could have died a civilian suicide; no magic, no skills, just a leap, a step, and the seconds it would take to fall. But you didn’t do that, either.

* * *

  
Ashamed and downtrodden and hopeless and angry. That’s the man you were.

An imperfect teacher, falling into the same mistakes of your masters, who learned from their masters. But you were not to blame; no one man holds the entire life of another in his hands. You guide but you cannot make a mountain move if it doesn’t want to. You cannot chase away the dark when it is invited; a shadow is only there when it’s welcome. You are but man; you tried and you tried and you tried, but even you can’t be perfect. You learned some, you did, but everyone fails, everyone fails, everyone fails.

But you put so much burden on your shoulders that too many people asked you to carry; you were not Atlas, and you can’t carry the world on your back. You had to teach and you had people who needed you but you tried to do it alone.

There was no one to help you and you had to weed out the obsolete, the damaging, the wrong of those who came before you all on your own. Only a dozen students, but they were the world. They were your world.

Perhaps you were Icarus, perhaps you had too much hubris.

Perhaps you were just a man, the last of your kind, and you were trying very hard to save the light, the remnants of your people.

* * *

  
A moment of fear cost you your life and the lives of your students and the lives of your loved ones. The lasting shame, the ball and chain you carry on. Maybe you went to the island, thinking the weight would drown you in the undertow. Perhaps you think you deserved it.

But you didn’t make him raise his saber and you didn’t make him burn it all down. You didn’t make him recruit for the Dark, you didn’t make him choose to run from the light. You weren’t the obsession festering under his skin, you weren’t the voice inside his brain. You didn’t do it.

You didn’t do it.

* * *

 

People run when they are scared. People run when they’re ashamed. People run when they make mistakes, when they grieve, when they are helpless, when they’re vulnerable. People run for many reasons and so did you.

People don’t run when they’re suicidal. They jump.

But you didn’t jump head first into the abyss. You fled with a trace; you fled with pieces of a map behind you. You fled leaving questions and looking for answers.

You isolated yourself in the shame; you lost your sister’s son, you lost many sons and daughters. You isolated yourself in grief; buried in the rubble, you couldn’t feel them die but when you came to, oh, you lost yourself in the pain. It burned, it burned, it burned. You isolated yourself to cut out your own sorrow and cut out your pride.

You took the blame and you swallowed it, but it wasn’t your poison to drink.

* * *

 

Maps lead people to places and to other people. A map is not left on accident, a map means something. You left a map, something for someone to find, something for someone to follow. You left behind hope.

You repeat it like a mantra – that you wanted to die, that you wanted to kill the Jedi with you, that they deserved to die because like you they were flawed and like you they let the dark side thrive. But words stop meaning something when you say them too much, and even more when they started empty.

But that isn’t true and you know it. If you wanted to die, then do it. If you wanted to end the Jedi, then do it. You always could.

But like before, those years ago, young and so much like your father, you didn’t.

Some say naïve, reckless, immature.

You know it was hope.

You wanted knowledge, you wanted understanding, you wanted the history, you wanted so much. You wanted to see where you’d gone wrong, what could you have done instead. You needed to see if others had failed before you, and how to build from the ashes. You wanted the history of your people, a people of thousands of generations, spanning so much time and space, and how they made it in the face of uncertainty. How did they make light out of the dark.

You wanted hope.

You didn’t run to an abandoned island to die. You learned how to live.

* * *

 

Days go by and you adapt to the landscape. The island is unforgiving, harsh and cold, the inversion of the home you once knew. You learned how to fish and garden, you learned how to get clean water. The native peoples to the island don’t speak to you, but you get them. They are preserving the past; you are a remnant of the past. You do not let yourself rust; you read the ancient texts, you keep your saber at your bedside.

You don’t keep track of the time, but its inconsequential anyhow. Time passes, you study, you move on. Like your master before you, you lie in wait. Like your master, you wait for a sign, even if you don’t know what it is just yet, even if you don’t know you’re waiting.

There is balance here, a balance you sought for so long. There is life and death and peace and violence and cold and the sun and more. There is much light here, much history and there is darkness underneath. The way it seems to always be.

But you’re not afraid, and it’s because you know the truth.

* * *

 

You always stared off at the horizon, waiting.

Once a young boy on a desert wasteland of a planet, a place of suffering and crime and heat, you stared off at twin suns sinking into the sands. Back then, you wanted to know your place in the galaxy, knowing you were meant for more than to moisture farm. Your blood called for adventure and you left the moment you could. Like your father you wanted to belong and like your mother you longed for justice. But for a long time, you only watched the sunset; just watched and watched and watched. You waited then.

You wait now.

A man who leaves a map wants to be found.

You are an older man now, wiser and hurt and despondent. The world was much darker than you thought back then and you know better now and it’s hard. Only you blame you for not being able to cope; no one would have fared any better in your place. You thought you had a destiny; maybe you did and then you squandered it. But there is still light in you and there is still a spark; you watch the fading sun set into the dark waves and you wait and you wait and you wait.

Hope arrives, one day, unexpectedly. The way it should.

It comes on a familiar ship, in the form of a strange young girl. You can feel her before you see her, but you feel the light inside her and you are reminded of a boy from Tatooine – a nobody who wanted to save the galaxy once, too.

You stand, and stand, and stand.

She comes.

You wait, and wait, and wait.

You are found.


End file.
